Perhaps I'm confused here. When doing long exposures, why does one need to see the meter reading? I've done many long exposures with my FM, FE and FE-2. Because of film reciprocity, I usually dial in +2 on the exposure compensation dial, lock-up the shutter, and let the camera do the rest. It's really that simple. Am I missing something in this conversation?

You're not missing anything, the OP was questioning why Nikon didn't learn from the 1983 released FE2 and incorporated that same design into the 2001 released FM3A. He imagined this would be an annoyance to people shooting snap shots in bars/etc.

I don't know if I am right or wrong but I always understand that match needles metering is like that of the FE and F2A is center the needle. I learned about the term since 1976 when I was reading a bunch of photographic magazine to research for my very first camera. And thus the Pentax KX is match needles and the K1000 is center the needle. Both the Olympus OM1 and OM2 are center the needle type.

You're entitled to your opinion but it's hardly the case in general. The Nikkormat's were made and sold for less than the Nikon's and if it was true Nikon and a whole lot of its customers made serious mistakes for many years.

I don't know if I am right or wrong but I always understand that match needles metering is like that of the FE and F2A is center the needle.

"Match needle" refers to matching the needle to a desired, specific aperture or shutter speed.

"Center-the-needle" refers to centering the needle between fixed + and - indicators [or in some cases a fixed needle with an open circle on the end] by varying aperture and/or shutter speed irrespective of the specific values of each.

In the case of the Nikon F2 with a DP-11/12 finder and ADR you end up with what is effectively a hybrid match needle/center-the-needle system.

Last edited by f8&bthere; 01-27-2013 at 02:44 PM. Click to view previous post history.